In addition to the powerful standard features that FrontFace for Public Displays (Digital Signage Software) and FrontFace for Touch Kiosks (Kiosk Software) have to offer, additional functionality can be easily added by so called plugins, which are available separately. Specifically, the plugins for integrating appointment and calendar data are very popular and significantly increase the range of possible use cases and applications of the FrontFace software products.

1.) Displaying Timetables, Calendars and Room Occupancy Plans

The new Schedules and Timetables Plugin 2.0 now provides even more flexibility for integrating calendar data from various data sources and for displaying it in a visually appealing way. Here is what the new version has to offer:

No matter if you are using Outlook/Exchange, Lotus Notes/Domino, an Excel spreadsheet or an iCalendar-compatible system, such as Google Calendar, to manage your appointments ‒ the new Schedules and Timetables Plugin 2.0 lets you integrate these data sources directly into your playlists or touchscreen front-ends. You can choose from many visualizations such as table/grid view, calendar view (day, week, month) or a single appointment view (e.g. for digital door signs).

Specifically, for FrontFace for Public Displays, you can also use the event source plugins “Exchange Calendar”, “Lotus Domino Calendar” and “Calendar” (free of charge!) for another interesting way of integrating calendar data into your playlists: These plugins allow starting playlists based on appointments in a calendar. Furthermore, it is not only possible to start playlists but to also fill text and image placeholders with data from appointments. This way, you can e.g. easily create a professional welcome screen system that automatically welcomes visitors with a personalized message. The entire management is then done using applications like Outlook or Lotus Notes which makes this system very easy to use.

The latest version of the calendar event source plugins also come with a new feature called “pre-run”. This allows you to define a timespan in minutes that will trigger an event before the actual appointment is due. This is great for managing the actual appointment data in the calendar and displaying the welcome message for every visitor e.g. 15 minutes earlier on the screen.